#half length

Harriet Cany Peale, the wife of Philadelphia portraitist Rembrandt Peale. Painted around the time of their marriage, this picture conveys the “love of painting and zeal for improvement” that, in her husband’s words, united this pair.

Collection: Private Collection

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was an educated man from a family of Muslim clerics in West Africa. In 1731 he was taken into slavery and sent to work on a plantation in America. By his own enterprise, and assisted by a series of spectacular strokes of fortune, Diallo arrived in London in 1733. Recognized as a deeply pious and educated man, in England Diallo mixed with high and intellectual society, was introduced at Court and was bought out of slavery by public subscription. Through the publication of his Memoirs in 1734, Diallo had an important and lasting impact on Britain’s understanding of West African culture, black identity and Islam. In the early years of the nineteenth-century, advocates of the abolition of slavery would cite Diallo as a key figure in asserting the moral rights and humanity of black people.

The sitter is probably the wife of the artist’s schoolboy friend Paul Valpinçon; Degas immensely enjoyed outings to their country house, Ménil-Hubert, and the dahlias, asters, and gaillardias in the bouquet would suggest a late summer visit.

The Bride of Abydos is a poem written by Lord Byron in 1813. One of his earlier works, The Bride of Abydos is considered to be one of his "Heroic Poems", along with The Giaour, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, The Corsair and Parisina. These poems contributed to his poetic fame at the time in England.

Alexandra Feodorovna (6 June [O.S. 25 May] 1872 – 17 July 1918), born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Tsar Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. A granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra was one of the most famous royal carriers of hemophilia and passed the condition to her son, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia.

Collection: Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna, Austria

Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, United States